A process control system may be provided in an industrial plant. Such a system normally comprises a number of process control devices involved in the control of the process. The operation of these devices is typically monitored by plant operators via operator terminals of the system.
A network forming unit, for instance in the form of a network simulation tool, may be provided for the process control system, which network forming unit may support the design of a communication infrastructure or communication network to be used for the process control system and the process control applications or functions using it. This network forming unit may not only be provided for suggesting a system model of the infrastructure, but may also be used for simulations of the communication through it.
One example of such a network forming unit is discussed in U.S. Pat. No. 8,160,843. The unit according to the document receives system function information and device location information and determines a communication infrastructure.
US 2004/0117116 is concerned with determining how many devices are to be connected to a fieldbus segment of a process control system.
Such a system model may thus be created for suggesting a communication network that is to be implemented for the process control system. This model may then be used for building a real communication network.
When looking at the real communication network or network with regard to an application having a problem in fulfilling a communication requirement, it may be hard to tell where in the communication network the problem occurs. It is also hard to tell how critical the failure of a particular network element would be. Therefore appropriate counter-measures may be hard to implement. Furthermore the investigation of the problem would typically involve an expert, meaning typical automation engineers cannot do tasks like root-cause and impact analysis.
It would therefore be of interest to improve on the above-mentioned situation.